Born in installments during the early 20th century, the bungalow court was a miniature of the neighborhood street it faced, scaled to the pedestrian and reserved for a select community. A now discontinued housing type, the promise of the bungalow court rested in its calibration of scale and its blurring of collective boundaries. As small, low-slung homes, usually six to twenty units, aligned and arrayed across their site, bungalow courts provided better open spaces, water, and sanitation, compared to the groupings of cheap houses or shacks that populated densely developed lots in early 20th century Los Angeles. Like the city itself, the courts celebrated the tension between authenticity and inauthenticity, embracing trending styles of the era, such as Craftsman, Colonial Revival, and Mission Revival. Their adaptation to Southern California’s climate suggested a specific compatibility between form, place, and time. In the bungalow court, the fortuitous meeting of increased housing demand, good weather, and imported architectures converged to produce Los Angeles’ own identifiable multi-family housing type.

A century later, bungalow courts still inspire notions of collective and affordable small-scale housing, but high real estate costs, obtuse zoning regulations, and aggressive social individualism have created obstacles to new architectures. SPEEDBOAT teamed up with TERREMOTO to produce a prototype for a new collective housing project, a way forward for those daring enough to join us. The unique spatial features and economic forces underlying the design of this contemporary bungalow court turns its gardens into housing commons. In LA's mild climate, designs and constructions need to provide only basic shelter from sun, wind, and occasional rain. Temperate conditions allow the courts to capitalize on the use of exterior space, with porches, gardens, and a landscaped commons acting as extensions of the interior. A lot’s composition necessitates proximity, with an outdoor environment that is shared. Smaller than a park, more public than a backyard. The spaces of gardens and pathways are focal points, communal gathering spaces, and vectors of movement between the individual housing units. A little yours, a little mine. The in-between spaces became the setting for the SPEEDBOAT court’s own miniature world, a breed of community distinct from the city beyond.